


glass_and_frost

by WonderAss



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Character Study, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Loneliness, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mind Games, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, One Shot, Pet Names, References to Canon, Self-Esteem Issues, Smut, Touch-Starved, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 05:51:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderAss/pseuds/WonderAss
Summary: Everyone wears a mask. What separates one person from the other is knowing when to take it off...and to whom.





	glass_and_frost

Song Inspiration: "Turn To Dust" by Kelela

*

"Are you comfortable?"

"Sure."

"It's a little cold. I can turn up the thermostat, if you wish."

"I'm fine."

"Good." She softens her voice, because the request never gets easier. No matter how many times she asks. "...May I speak to him again?"

The man's arms remain crossed, his side-profile more firmly etched into her memory than a full portrait. She can, however, catch a twitch in his jaw. A flicker of dissatisfaction cracking the veneer.

"Only if you're comfortable doing that, Elliot."

She always asked too many questions.

That's what her mother always said, often over the round of her shoulder as she leaned into the kitchen sink and scrubbed fruitlessly at stained porcelain. An exemplary woman, she was. Both of the written word as a literature professor who graduated with honors and as a mother who never clicked with her role. A strange woman, until the day she died...to be a truth seeker and single parent both. At least, for anyone who _saw_ that side of her. Sally Gordon had embraced questions outside of their old, tiny house in the Alabama countryside. Snuffed them out once the door closed and the world snapped shut with it.

Asking about his social life, or lack thereof, has yielded little. Attempts at interjecting politics into the conversation hasn't inspired so much as a rant. He doesn't seem to be back on drugs, but addicts could be clever sometimes about their relapses. Her mother's voice mocks her now as Elliot Alderson, her ever exemplary patient, stares at her head-on.

"...It's good to see you." Krista says, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. The thrill of success tickles the base of her spine, a sensation she knows better than to celebrate too soon with a man like him. "How have you been?"

"Much better now that I'm seeing you're wearing tights today." The corner of his mouth curls, enough to pop out his laugh line. "Always had a weakness for those."

Krista smiles politely. The tickle in her spine scratches faster, a little heavier, as it tends to when he gets like this. Mr. Robot's flirtatious tendencies were likely a subconscious amalgamation of Elliot's suppressed sexual desires and compulsive introversion. This personality did many things the man was normally too inhibited to do. It was curious, considering Elliot was also no stranger to sexual encounters. Not _surprising_, no, but...curious. She wonders if today's session is going to veer toward the topic. Her fingers itch for pencil and paper, but she resists the urge. Elliot was far too used to being overlooked and ignored.

It's a good habit that's rewarded easily. The man's smile deepens. He slouches back in the sofa, languid where Elliot had been huddled and uncomfortable. One hand reaches up to rub at his chin, a deliberate little motion she hasn't seen before.

"...and those _eyes_." He huffs a laugh into his fingers. "God, those eyes."

The topic of desire, then, and all that comes with it. Krista monitors her breathing carefully, all too aware of how perceptive this man is, irregardless of whichever facet of his psyche decided to break the surface.

"Come on, help me out here." He stretches out an arm over the sofa's back, crossing his leg over the other in a subconscious imitation of her. "I'm here laying out my guts and you're giving me the silent routine. A man's got feelings, you know."

"I appreciate the compliments, but flirting with patients, or responding to such, is outside of my hands." She responds, smoothly. His smile hangs half-open on a frozen second, on a rebuke or another flirt, she can't say.

"You've got _very_ interesting taste in men, Krista."

Her stomach flutters, a drawsting tight line of tension that has never quite abated since he confessed one of his many sins. Krista tilts her head.

"What do you mean by 'interesting'?"

"Come on. There's studying a person up-and-down, like you've been going at, and there's..." He nods slowly, reaching a conclusion only he can see. "..._that_."

"I'm afraid I'm not following. If there's anything we've established here thus far, it's that it's better to be too honest than not honest enough."

For a few long, ticking seconds Mr. Robot is silent. Tapping his finger against the sofa's back and bobbing his foot. Then he lurches to his feet. Krista stiffens...but he doesn't move to her. No, he's flitted over to the window, tugging back one of the blinds to peer down at the city below. Her shoulders slowly relax. These paranoid urges of his tend to strike suddenly and without warning. They get worse when Mr. Robot has taken control.

"You're safe here." She says, carefully avoiding a name, not wanting to prioritize any aspect of him so soon. "The door is locked and I'm here, with you, to help you with whatever you need."

"...Good." Is his response, though she doesn't know which part he could be referring to. He nods, once, and the shades whisper shut again. "...Krista."

She shifts in her chair to better follow his trajectory as he slinks away from the window, past the sofa and up to the opposite end of the little coffee table.

"You don't have to keep up with the routine. If there's anything you and I can relate on, it's knowing that the mask doesn't always have to stay up."

The chill that's been kept at bay now settles over her skin. He's starting to mimic her speech patterns, a healthy sign that social empathy is still in-tact, but his body language is evolving too quickly. He's gone from antsy to watchful, watchful to almost...enthralled. Krista concentrates on her breathing, interpreting her body as an extension of the expensive antique chair. Just shifting her legs into another position threatens to crack the frost, breaking the illusion and sending Elliot's mirror self back to the far corners of his mind. Even as she knows this personality to be the _furthest_ thing from fearful.

"A lot of interesting things going on behind those brown eyes. See, that's Elliot's favorite. Brown eyes. Maybe it's because he's always staring into a bright monitor and craves a damn break." Mr. Robot widens his stance a little, hands shoved in his pockets and gesturing to himself in a decidedly un-Elliot manner. "You take it off around anyone besides me?"

"My...mask?" Krista intones, slowly. He nods.

"That's right. At one of those stuffy board meetings or on that cute little green sofa where you like to nap."

This is a deflection. A means of flipping the question back onto the curious, avoiding an uncomfortable answer with the additional victory of exposing another. She would never call the question itself unnecessary, though. It was something everyone had to ask themselves, at one point or another, in a society that demanded facade as part of the entry fee. She was indeed wearing a mask right now. One of composure and ease alike, as contradictory as a spider's web. Something transparent, yet strong enough to capture and entrance. The face of a psychologist and a professional acquaintance.

If she didn't know if she was the spider or the fly...it's not her place to share.

"Sometimes." She replies, and already she knows vagueness won't work anymore. He's turned his face back to the window haze, his expression drowning in white and his voice in shadow.

"Did you ever take it off around Thomas?"

The chill tightens.

"How about Bill?"

Krista doesn't move.

"Bill. Tch. Never cared much for that name. Not even back when parents still slapped it down onto birth certificates when they were too tired to give a shit after an eight-hour labor." He shakes his head in a silent sneer. "What about Ben? Never got over what you wrote to that one. 'All I ask from you is that you come home. It doesn't matter when just as long as you come home. Come home.'" There's no sneer this time when he turns back to her, the vacillating blue and green of his eyes hypnotic in the window light. "Tragic stuff."

Sharing details of her life is part of the profession. It was impossible to ask another to bare their soul without giving a little in return, lest the hypocrisy obscure the path before a single step could be taken. He knows more about her than what she's shared, though. He's _known_...for a little while, now.

"That man you dated. Lenny Shannon, was it?" He scoffs at her impassivity, leaning back on his heels and lifting up the hands still in his jacket pockets in an animated shrug. "Come on, it's a _joke_. Feigning ignorance of a man whose full name I know and entire life I pulled up in a matter of minutes to use as blackmail? You can laugh. I won't judge you."

Krista doesn't realize she's gripping the arms of the chair until she finally finishes a full breath. Her head swims unreliably, a whirlwind of details so tiny they're like sand grains in a storm. It's a bad sign, being out-of-touch with her body like this. Mr. Robot drops his arms and tilts his head. Still studying her. Still mimicking her. His laugh is more visible than audible, eyes glittering from where the light is carving him out against the bookcase.

"God. You _always_ go for the shitheads. The middle-class douchebags with perfect daddy issues, who keep you at arm's length and always give you something to strive for. Kind of makes me wonder if your attraction to me should be flattering or insulting." His shoulders bob fitfully. He rolls his head to one side and peers down at her like a crow, laugh still compressed in his throat. "Again. I'm _kidding_. I'm pretty damn flattered, if we're being honest here. You're a catch, Krista. People keep catching you, but they never want to keep you. Tragic is the word of the week."

Compartmentalizing. Recognition. Understanding. These are the automatic words supplanted by her mind when she feels a warm bloom in her chest, then a chill in the pit of her stomach. This isn't good. The fractured glass of Elliot Alderson's sanity is tarring her own reflection. Left unmanaged it could spell doom for a vital session and all those to follow. It's the aftermath of empathy. The consequence of feeling so much for a person their damage spreads.

"I can see you picking me apart again. How about we switch things up for once, hm?" He takes a step closer, then another, around the table to stand by her chair and pierce the professional bubble that has held firm for months. "Makes me wonder if you had a broken childhood. I mean, pretty much everyone does, but things break in different ways. Elliot got a mother who hit him, hit his sister, hit pretty much _anything_ she could get her hands on when she got in one of those moods. You know the ones."

The crooked trajectory of his state of mind is starting to veer off the rails. Is he afraid she'd forget these details? Trying to elaborate on a detail she failed to belabor in past sessions? She learned all of this in the trial, where he had to figure out how comfortable he'd be with her. When Elliot dropped his shy neuroticism like a curtain and let spill the ugly details of his childhood, it was with the hopes of setting himself at odds. A common enough trait by severely introverted clients: those who were assured they could back someone into a corner by making a mockery of social inhibition, all with the safety of knowing they could retreat into themselves further if they failed.

"Got a dad that up and died on him. Tch. What'd _you_ get? Father brought over hookers and drank too much? Mother that was never happy with you?"

Krista's mouth tightens. He hacked her dating profiles. It stood to reason he had the ability to read anything _else_ he got his hands on. It's something he's already done, because a smugly self-effacing note works its way into his voice. As ill-fitting as the suit and slacks he hates so much.

"I mean...you said yourself human interaction is healthy. I _skimmed_, if it helps. You can fill in the spoiler gaps yourself."

Good. This is good. She's still in control. He's sharing another secret with her -- the secret of what he tries to keep himself from wanting -- and it's a foundation that only strengthens trust. She just...can't quite figure out why it's so hard to speak. A detail is out of place. Something impossibly small and enormous. Something she's _missing_ and needs to latch onto so this session ends up helping him. All the while Mr. Robot's expression has been softening, the harsh angles bleeding out and making him look startlingly young.

"...You want people to fix, sweetheart. I get that." He smiles, in a different way, and it makes her want to ask a thousand more. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realizes she's just proven his point. "Oh, I get that. I do."

The tip of his tongue passes over his lips. His chin dips down, eyes sinking into another shadow as he leans one hand on the chair backing to better loom over her.

"Figuring out fucked up is fun. It's empowerment in a miserable world that will decide how you get fucked up and by whom, never _if_, always when. We're _plenty_ fucked up. You'll get your fill and then some." He cups her cheek, the first he's ever touched her, and pets a slow thumb beneath her eye. "We'll give you what you've been looking for."

Krista's hands shake. The chill of the room is forgotten as she tries to understand the trail sprinkled before her. Her attempt to suss out his broken pieces and help him knit them together, if not perfectly. The ensuing mess of her insecurities, peeled apart from their electronic trail and scattered every which way. She can't so much as bleat a miserable protest. Her hands grip the chair arms again, strangely soft and pliant beneath her fingertips.

"You said 'we'." She manages, a part of her telling her to call for help, another part telling her she's dangerously close to victory. Mr. Robot leans forward a little.

"Yeah...we're a team now, aren't we?" He purses his mouth and bobs his head, a play at bashfulness that doesn't brush away the dip in his voice. "We've both wanted you a while, which...I guess is to say..._I_ have. I have."

Are the two personalities merging? Is some part of Elliot seeking a way out of compartmentalizing? Has Mr. Robot decided to acquiesce in light of a recent event? She can't find any answers to _any_ of these questions, nor the breath to ask them, because Mr. Robot and Elliot take her head in both hands and kiss her.

"_Mm._"

She doesn't know who made the sound. All she knows is she's out of control and _spiraling_. Krista tries to ground herself, desperate to pull herself back down into this chilly room, suddenly so, so warm and soft. Her body betrays her mind, leaning up into his mouth, as if he stole her breath long ago. The man kisses her much the same. As if he's only whole when he does so, mouth crooking wide, pulling _tight_. His fingers reach around to curl in her hair, drag along her scalp. She's not sure if she's kissing him back, even though, deep down, etched in the fabric of what she knows to be true, she wants-

"-to kiss him." He pulls back for a breath, an ombre smudge on his lips and his breath heaving. "I know you've wanted to. I know _everything_ now. Every last lingering glance when you thought he wasn't looking. Eyes _that_ fucking big? They don't miss a thing. Trust me."

Mr. Robot tugs her close and crushes his mouth to hers again, before she can figure out how to breathe on her own. He slides his tongue along her teeth, wet and sloppy and everything she expected, in a reality she never expected. Krista shakes under the onslaught, fingers gripping again hard enough to hurt her fingers. He grunts into her mouth at that, and it's then she realizes she's been holding onto his arms the whole time. She lets go, though there aren't many places for her hands to go, drifting instead to his collar to twist the fabric in her palms.

"Patience is a virtue, Krista. Sofa's just behind us." He tugs back again, though he hovers his face close, breath brushing hot against her skin. "Kind of fucked up to do it there, though. Some things have to be sacred, right?" His voice softens, again. From a drawl to a purr that rumbles his chest. "That's okay. I can meet you where you are."

He leans up and over, curling one leg in the gap between the chair seat and her leg, not quite settling into her lap and still _far_ closer than he should be.

"I know what you're thinking. 'I'm his therapist. I can't be doing this.' Right? 'It's wrong, all wrong, I could mess him up even more than he is now'." He drags his tongue along the corner of his mouth. Licking off her lipstick. "Not possible, but it's kind of you to worry."

Krista's head spins, the leftover drag of his teeth still throbbing in her bottom lip. She tries not to breathe him in, though it's impossible now, the sweat from a long walk and the tang of smoke now surrounding her as thick as a fog. She tries not to taste him, even though her lips feel bruised, her make-up mussed and salty. Her mind scrabbles in vain for what she left behind. That the detached drawl in those last few words were Elliot's. That the mimicking of her thought processes were Mr. Robot's. There are too many questions. Too many, and not enough time to ask them all. His nose moves to her hair, breathing in and tickling the baby hairs behind her ear.

"Not to be creepy or anything..." His smile spreads toothy and indulgent from where it's pressed against her hair. "...but you smell like _heaven_."

Then his hand is slipping down to cup her thigh.

"I-" Her throat clicks once, twice. Like a jammed gun that went from all the potential to none of it. "We...we _can't_."

"I or we?" He huffs a laugh and breathes her in again. His hand doesn't move, a constant, warm weight burning through her leggings. "My turn, sweetheart. Which one is it?"

She knows. She just wishes she didn't. Being a psychologist has forever cursed her with the instinct to dissect, to face the truth head-on, irregardless of whether or not she _admits_ to it. The promise of a few rare minutes bliss, where the outside world is reduced to a white glow bleeding through a three-by-three window...it's hers, with just one swallowed answer. Mr. Robot's smile is sympathetic. He kisses her cheek, strangely chaste for all his ardor, and slips his hand past her skirt, past her thighs to press two fingers against her. The touch is a shock, well before he rolls and presses right where she dips in.

"I know how you touch yourself."

He mouths beneath her ear, nuzzles beneath her jaw, feather-light whispers at complete odds with the hand groping between her legs. The other slides fingers through her hair, dappling goosebumps up and down her spine.

"I mean...I don't _know_ know. I watched." He corrects as he fiddles with the fine hairs, drawl muffled from where he's still nibbling away at her overheated skin. "That little, uh, cell cam video you sent Lenny so he'd finally let you into bed? Not bad for twenty-two seconds. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. That destroys the fun, right. It's not healthy to forgo healthy human interaction and skip the part where you create trust with another. I know. I know." He licks a hot stripe up the side of her neck. "I just..._really_ wanted to watch."

Then he bites, sharply, and she _gasps_, tugging away on pure instinct. Mr. Robot bulls his weight down, his thin frame alarmingly strong, and the hand that was soothing the nape of her neck grips her firm by a fistful of hair. Krista claws at his shoulder weakly, her heart fluttering in tune with his as she stares up at the ceiling. Sweat dampens her collar as he digs in his teeth and sucks in a bruise, a hot agony she doesn't for the life of her pull away from. When he tugs off again his voice has gone coarse. Completely unrecognizable.

"You want them fucked up and pushing you away. I can _do_ that. I've done a lot worse. It's no trouble. No trouble at all." His breath comes faster, too. A hint of adrenaline slicing through the lust. He huffs her again (breathing in like he's smoking, like he's chasing a high-). "I can be fucked up and take you here, hold you in my arms, and make you the only one that matters until I decide you suddenly don't."

She wants it. She shouldn't. She _does_. When she moves her hand she's still holding onto his shirt. Like her limbs have personalities of their own, truths all their own, she slides fingers up his shoulders and finally looks head on into those eyes she knows, and doesn't know, so well.

"There. There you go, sweetheart. You get me. You get us. It's perfect, isn't it? You get someone to fix...I get someone who _gets it_." He's almost panting with eagerness, now. Shallow flutters that shake his chest. Mr. Robot licks at the bruise he left, then presses his forehead to her cheek. "Say it. Just...say it."

Krista swallows slowly, the ache on her neck and the ache _much_ lower blurred beyond separation.

"...It's perfect."

He leans back and smiles loosely, similar to the one he once brought to her office while high on morphine.

"_It's perfect_."

Then he's off. Without him the chill of the room returns like a slap, except where he's now leaning down on the floor to nudge her legs apart. Mr. Robot glances up at her, once, before shoving his hands up her skirt and tugging her tights down past her knees. Without another word he leans in. His breath was hot on her neck, but it's _scorching_ now, each kiss he presses to her inner thighs harsh as a brand. Krista drapes her neck along the back of the chair, crushes her eyes shut. The blare of higher reasoning is muffled. Outside the window. Outside the door. Down the stairs, for all it could do now.

"There." Is all he says when she leans up just an inch. Just enough for him to hook a thumb in her underwear and tug it down with the rest. Elliot (no, Mr. Robot-) reaches through her hip and the seat to press a hand to the small of her back. He tugs her forward, one infinite inch, then leans in again...and stays.

Ben never did this. Said he hated the taste. Lenny never did, either. She wonders if it was because of his wife. Krista's mind tries to latch onto a trail to peel apart, even as she's being peeled apart, Mr. Robot using two fingers to hold her apart and lap in earnest, wet clicks of sound that crack the quiet room. His breath tickles, little huffs as he leans in, then out. Up, then down. Around...then in. Krista's jaw drops, eyes fluttering, seeing nothing. The heat is starting to drench her, sticking her blouse to her chest. Awful thoughts emerge at that, of him licking the rest off once he was done here, but there's no time to dwell. Not anymore.

One finger slips up -- deliberate or not, she doesn't know -- and presses right where she needs it to. Krista _shudders_, jerks her hips, and Mr. Robot repeats the movement, as if he'd planned it all along. He has, she knows he has. He's long since knocked her down a peg, now destroying the pedestal she was standing on and languishing in the pieces. Mr. Robot twists his head to the side, mumbles something into her, words she can only feel, and she _can't_. She can't stop squirming, can't stop huffing the last shreds of composure to die in the room's now cloying heat.

Her body isn't her own, because her fingers find his hair to hold or pet. She tugs her hand back hastily, terrified of triggering something in a man she understands too well and still doesn't understand as well as she wants. Without pause he grips her by the wrist, smudging her arm with the slick, and pulls it back to where it was. She can almost hear the hiss in her ear.

"_That's good, sweetheart. Show me you want me. I'm in control, except you are._"

Krista slowly pets his dark hair, in that deliberate, lingering way she never thought she could. She pulls her fingers through, careful not to muss the careful style, the same one he's always patting down and nudging back into place. Elliot might loathe this touch still, she thinks, but Mr. Robot _revels_ in it. His head twists to the side again, coming up for air with a huff against her thigh's tender skin. The contradiction returns when he plants wet kisses, the grip on her thighs starting to bruise, nails curling in to edge pain into the haze that's turned her mind into cotton.

Elliot's voice whispers in her other ear. His quintessential dull, drained note, humming like a taut wire.

"_Want me. I just...want someone to want me_."

It's been too _long_ since any man could do this for her. She dances and sways on the peak, so tantalizingly close she can't stop writhing. Mr. Robot trades his tongue for his fingers, pushing them in and biting at her inner thigh, kneading it until the pain almost overwhelms the blistering ache. There's no hiding anything. She's no puzzle to be solved at this point. Clever fingers curl and press hard, his thumb rubbing counterclockwise, and for a few incredible seconds...she's forgotten what she's done.

The room sways in a murky blur of brown and yellow, the only thing she can hear the conch shell of her faint heartbeat. She comes to at the feel of denim on her fingertips, coarse and warm from where he's pushing her hand to his crotch.

"Touch me."

The sweet cloud of endorphins deafens the contrary. That he normally _hates_ being touched. She wonders if this is another inhibition Mr. Robot is tugging out by the roots as his eyes flicker closed, slowly leaning his head back enough to jut out the sharp curve of his Adam's apple. Her touch is soft, learning the feel of him more than anything, but he's understimulated. Has been, for a while.

"_Yeah..._" He sighs. "Yeah, we'll have to move to the sofa for this."

"I thought you said..." She murmurs, hating the undignified slur of her voice. "...some things are sacred."

"Yeah." He licks the taste of her off, his chin still smudged shiny. "I lied."

He pushes off her in one smooth motion, dropping into a kneel to tug her undergarments down the rest of the way and slip off her shoes. Once he's nudged them beneath the chair he's on his feet again and taking her hand. She watches in a daze as he pulls her over past the coffee table to the sofa. Stares as he lays her down into the cushions, then shrugs out of his shirt and tosses it to the floor, followed closely by his jacket. Their past sessions mutter to her just outside the door. The fourth one is loudest. Where he admitted to being touch-starved and craving being held almost as much as pills.

'_That's it, right there._', her mind whispers as he unbuttons her blouse and unbuckles her bra, letting it fall to the floor with the rest. His olive skin is bleached from the room's cold affect, his chest and stomach a smooth contrast to her insistent failures. '_There._'

Mr. Robot drapes over her and presses close, folding his arms by her ears to balance himself. The feel of his skin on hers...is _electric_. She's touch-starved, too, and he knows it. She slides hands down to his waistband, tugging clumsily at him as she leans up to bite at his lip. He grins with approval, kissing instantly, beyond inhibition. He shifts and wriggles in a counterpoint to her hands, until his jeans and briefs are far enough for her to guide him. He tastes like the both of them, of make-up and weed and salt in an organic baroque, and the reality of it all blurs again when he pushes inside.

"_Sweetheart_."

He's so close she doesn't know where he ends and she begins. His arm pillows her head in a half-hug, rocking his hips as slowly as time. Lenny never held her like this. Held her hand in polite company, sure, when they'd sit at a forgettable diner and talk about the sports game over sandwiches. Ben wouldn't hold her hand, but he would rut into her until he was spent and leave her behind to roll over to a perfect sleep. Thomas, Nicholas, Samuel...the pointlessness of them all cuts like a _knife_ as she rocks up and down, each perfect stroke splintering her further into fractal.

They never held her like this. They never filled her near to spilling...like this. A prickling heat stings the corner of her eyes, and he knows that, too.

"I'd gut them _all_, if I didn't know you'd turn me in for it." His lips press to the shell of her ear, the hiss muffled to throbbing, and he only pauses to groan deep in the back of his throat. His forehead slides away to burrow into the side of her neck. Back to the bruise like a magnet. "Fuck a world like this, where someone so damn _good_ chases after those who are never worth it."

She's not good. Not by the definition of those she aspired to. She's breached patient confidentiality, fallen for someone she shouldn't, and fallen for someone she shouldn't..._again_. Krista digs nails into his back and crushes her eyes shut as he starts to pursue his high with reckless abandon. Rough thrusts that shake the sofa, threaten to expose them with one too many rattles to the floorboards. His hand returns to her hair, grips her scalp to push their foreheads together and lock gazes again.

"Don't fade away." He commands, though it could be a plea. "Stay _here_."

He stares into her eyes, a steady gaze that almost wavers as pleasure overtakes him. Krista nods.

"_Okay._"

She wraps her arms around him as he buries his face into her hair and shudders, and shudders, and shudders.

There are five minutes left. The clock above the door is attempting to remind her of her duty, but she's breathing more easily than she has...in as far as she can remember. Her body has cooled, but warmth lingers beneath her skin, thick and heady. Krista watches through half-lidded eyes as he stretches. As he dresses. Studies the way his shoulders hunch, how his hand keeps returning to his hair and pushing it back into place. The tickle of the familiar returns.

"Elliot." She says. He doesn't turn around. "...Mr. Robot."

The man's head turns, just so. Just enough to see the omnipresent bags under his eyes. Krista feels the sink of contradiction threatening to swallow her anew. The chill of her own company settles over her like a blanket, but her eyes are growing hot again, and another, deeper ache threatens to return and take his place.

"...Will you come back?"

He tugs on his jeans, snaps the belt together. Leans down again.

"I'll answer your question with another." She watches the lean muscles of his back flex as he pulls on his jacket and adjusts his collar. "...Which one are you asking?"

If she says both, she accepts him as he is, and dooms him to emotional stagnation. Fails a good man who's been stranded too long in an island _and_ an ocean. If she says one or the other, she alienates...one...or the other, and splits him further. It's not a question she should be asking. She's not his therapist anymore. Not with the sweat trickling down her temple and a similar sensation trailing down her thigh to soak the cushion. The possibility of something else is too distant. Too nebulous for her tired mind to grasp.

The session draws to a close when Elliot runs one last hand through his hair, picks up his bag and walks out the front door.

Krista stares up at the ceiling, laying one hand on her stomach and touching the side of her neck with the other. Willing the frost away with the phantom of an oscillating dream.

**Author's Note:**

> checks to see if there are any fics that pair Elliot with the therapist he's repeatedly shown attraction to, who's a lot more messed up than she seems on the surface, cares for him beyond her job and knows some of his darkest secrets
> 
> sees nothing
> 
> **Time To Do This Myself!!!**
> 
> Timeline here is intentionally a little vague. _Spoiler alert_, Krista's met Mr. Robot before and is aware of Elliot's crimes, but this is clearly before he gets held hostage in season three. I'm pumped for the last season. Looking forward to chowing down on regular doses of surreal editing and unreliable narrators. pooh_dancing_with_fork_and_knife.gif


End file.
